Day: November 3, 2016

A few months ago I started getting a specific message during meditation and at other times. I kept hearing that I needed to work on aligning my life. What the what? How the hell was I gonna do that? I didn’t even understand what the phrase meant. My coffee pot helped me to figure out what aligning could mean and what it had to do with improving my flow.

So, when you see the phrase “align yourself,” what do you think? Like I said, I didn’t know what to think at all. And the message kept popping up. Every time I turned around, it seemed that’s what I would hear. At the time, I was trying to shove a square peg into a round hole in my professional life. I wanted to launch a very specific business and it wasn’t working. I couldn’t figure out why and I was frustrated.

So Frustrated

I was also frustrated with a lot of other things. My time management. My energy levels. My failed idea for a side business. My freaking coffee pot.

Wait, what?

Yeah, my coffee pot. We have one of those Mr. Coffee 4-cup coffee makers. It’s about a million years old, but I do love it. It makes just enough coffee to fill up my husband’s travel mug for the trip to work and still leaves me with a full cup of coffee. Well, let’s be honest, my mug holds more like two cups of coffee, but still. We both get coffee and I only have to wait for the one pot to brew.

But here’s the thing. I was starting to have trouble pouring coffee out of the pot. It was constantly dribbling over the side, no matter how I tried pouring the coffee. And I started noticing that even though I was holding the handle, the spout seemed to be all askew. I didn’t think it had ever done that before, but nothing had changed, right?

So I grumbled. For MONTHS. And wiped up coffee spills and dribbles. For MONTHS. Sometimes I can be kind of clueless, as we all can be, really, especially at 6am before a cup of coffee. I was so frustrated that I was determined to get a new coffee maker. I mean, this one was beyond ancient, after all, right?

Meanwhile, midway through the coffee pot drama, I’m getting the message about aligning my life.

Ding!

One day, I look at the coffee pot and I realize that it’s not bolted or riveted or even attached to the glass carafe at all. There’s a stainless steel band around the bottom of the carafe that holds the bottom of the handle and the top of the handle has a lip that pops over the top edge of the glass carafe.

Over time, what has happened is the band and the lip have gradually worked their way around the carafe, putting the handle out of alignment with the spout of the carafe.

Once I realized the problem, I gently slid the carafe around until the spout and the handle were opposite each other again. They aligned. And the next time I poured coffee? It was perfect, wonderful, amazing. The coffee flowed just the way it was supposed to.

Aligning My Life

So what the hell does my coffee pot problem have to do with the message I kept getting?

A lot, it turns out.

The next time I meditated and heard that I needed to align myself and my life, I stopped and changed the question. Instead of asking what that meant, I asked how to do it. I got some answers, which surprised me at first, but I started following those answers and realized that they really did help. {NB: I’ll talk about all of these in more depth in individual posts because I think that they’re worth going into much more detail.}

My Methods

One answer that I received was that I needed to meditate by myself. That was interesting, because I’d been meditating quite a bit, but I was using guided meditations. See, I’ve never been able to meditate on my own. It always felt awkward and weird and I just couldn’t seem to do it. But now, I gave it a try.

I started using my pendulum more. That’s helped me to build some self-trust and it’s also helped me with sorting through some issues. If you’re new to pendulums or dowsing, I highly recommend Pendulum Mojo by Amy Scott Grant {affiliate link}. I’ve read other stuff about pendulums and dowsing before and, honestly, they didn’t resonate with me at all. I get Amy and her advice works for me.

I started paying more attention to my crystals and carrying them with me. I’ve always collected crystals, but I usually didn’t have them on me. I’ve also found that although I had plenty of gemstone jewelry, I didn’t get the same feeling that I did from having a crystal on its own next to my skin.

I got much more serious about using Reiki regularly. I’m finishing up the course now for my Reiki Master certification and I honestly think this is one of the best things I’ve ever done. Reiki is transformative and I want to share it as much as I can.

I started using oracle cards, journaling, and venturing into Akashic record study. These are all still works in progress, but I’ll be sharing as I learn more.

The Results?

Right away the flow of my life changed. I didn’t feel like I was constantly fighting my way up stream. Are there days that I still have a rough go of it? Of course. But I take a deep breath and I focus back on what helps me with aligning my life. That’s part of why I started One Cricket Chirping, in fact. I wanted to share what I was experiencing and what helped me.

So tell me, when you hear the phrase “aligning my life,” what does it mean for you?